A/N: There is some dialogue in this chapter that's basically straight from The Deathly Hallows. So, not claiming that as mine. Yet, when has fan-fiction ever been completely original?
Comments, critique, opinions, all types of reviews welcomed and loved.
That summer Harry and his cousin focused on the Wizarding World of Britain. They went to Diagon Alley where they visited Gringotts and Thomas showed Harry his vault filled to the brim with gold coins, but told him he wasn't allowed to spend a single galleon of it until he turned seventeen.
Harry thought this to be woefully unfair, especially after they'd been to Jonko's joke shop and seen all the different Wizarding sweets. Sirius agreed with him, but unfortunately Sirius still wasn't one of Thomas's favourite people, and the only reason he'd been allowed to join them was because Harry had asked. He wanted to get to know his godfather.
But when they went to see a Quidditch match, a Wizarding sport where you flew around while heavy balls chased you around the air and tried to knock you down Thomas and Sirius bonded, while Harry tried not to get sick from anxiety and fear. He hoped flying a broom wasn't an essential part of being a wizard.
Though he kept that piece of information to himself and didn't mention it to either his cousin or godfather. He was afraid they'd try to plant him on a broom and tell him to fly or suffer.
They were leaving the area when someone who recognized Sirius shouted and ran over to them. "Black! That really you?"
"Dawlish," Sirius answered, with a welcoming but cautious smile.
"Never thought I'd see you again," the man said. "It was a real mess at the department when Pettigrew was caught. No one could really believe it."
"I can only imagine," Sirius said with a bitter tone and Dawlish's grin waned a bit.
"Look, Black, you know how it was then."
"I know, I know," Sirius replied, waving his hand dismissively. "It was great seeing you, but we should be going."
Dawlish turned his eyes to Sirius' companions. "Oh, didn't notice you were here with someone." He glanced at Thomas, but when he saw Harry his eyes widened. "My world, it's Harry Potter!" he yelled with an almost fanatical gleam.
"Harry Potter? Did he say Harry Potter?"
"The-Boy-Who-Lived is here?"
"Where is he? Mr Potter!"
Thomas pulled out his wand and pointed it at Dawlish who turned pasty white when Thomas snarled at him and the wand tip began to glow bright red. "Idiot," Thomas growled and slashed his arm down without releasing the spell.
The people around them were looking around, yelling, screaming for Harry, rushing and pushing against each other. Thomas bent down, wound his arm around Harry's waist and picked him up. Harry, more frightened than he wanted to admit fisted his hands on his cousin's robes and tried not to listen to the mob scream for his name.
"Get us out of here, Black," Thomas said, his left arm holding Harry tightly around the waist.
"I'll take care of it," Sirius answered, no trace of his usual humour left.
Harry squeezed his eyes closed and pressed his forehead against Thomas's chest, pretending he couldn't hear anything but the heart beating under his ear, and the breath that he felt ghosting along his scalp and ruffling his hair.
They were running, and then someone took hold off Harry's arm, wrapped his fingers around a rope, and he felt a push and a pull, and he was falling through a tunnel, up and down and around, and then it stopped and Harry, still pressed against Thomas's chest tried to stave off his nausea.
"Alright Harry?" Thomas asked, both his arms around the boy now. "I've always hated portkeys too. You never get used to being picked up by your navel and thrown across the country."
Harry, taking in deep inhales, unclenched his fists and lifted his head from Thomas's chest and looked over his shoulder to see where they were. The familiar driveway leading to their house greeted him, and he smiled shakily. He squirmed and Thomas finally let him down.
"I didn't realise it was that bad," Sirius said, wrapping a long around his right hand and frowning. "He's never going to be able to just walk down the street like a normal person, is he?"
Harry turned away from his godfather's grim face and without looking at either man again, started walking towards the house not wanting to hear Thomas confirm it. He didn't want to be The-Boy-Who-Lived if it meant he'd be ripped apart every time he tried to step out. When Thomas had told him, he'd thought being famous would be cool, not frightening.
He ran upstairs to the bathroom and stared at his reflection. He didn't know how the man had recognized him. Was it because of the scar, no matter how faint, or the glasses, round like in all the pictures of his dad, or maybe his hair?
He looked like his dad, Harry knew, but how had a man like Dawlish known his dad well enough to recognise him?
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When Harry came downstairs Sirius and Thomas were in the library, books in hand, but neither looked like they were reading. Their shoulders were tense and their faces still held signs of anger as if they'd been arguing.
Both turned when Harry pushed the door wider, yet neither spoke.
"I want it gone," Harry said lifting his hand rubbing at the lightning bolt scar.
Sirius stood still, but Thomas nodded, put down his book and said, "We'll see a healer, and if they can't help, a muggle doctor."
There was such certainty in Thomas's voice that despite the sceptical look on Sirius' face Harry believed him.
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"So this is your house?" Thomas asked, running a finger along a wall, leaving behind a line free of dust. He lifted his finger from the wall and grimaced at the dust gathered on his finger and looked around, trying to see something not filthy or disgusting to look at, but everything in the house was filthy and decaying.
"Not much to look at, is it?" Sirius grinned and kicked at coffee table that looked frail but proved to be surprisingly heavy when it did not move even an inch and Sirius yelled and hopped on one foot and tried to smother curses.
"Hey, there's some silverware here!" Harry shouted from the other side of the room, staring at a glass cabinet. He turned around and grinned, pushing his fringe from his smooth forehead.
The healers had not been able to do much about the scar, but they had found a woman in Knockturn who had been able to bleed the excess magic from the scar so it was like any other scar, not a curse scar and muggle medicine had done what magic couldn't; vanished all trace of it.
"Don't touch anything!" Sirius yelled and hurried to where Harry stood. "There's no telling how much of its cursed and with what."
Thomas walked over in a much more sedated pace and when he peered at the items he placed a hand on Harry's shoulder and gently pulled him back. Harry cast an annoyed glance at him from over his shoulder, but the nine year old let himself be pulled back from the cabinet.
"That's Slytherin's locket!" Sirius yelled. "What the hell is it doing here?" He opened the cabinet but before he could take out the locket Thomas placed his hand on his arm.
"You told Harry not to touch anything, but now you're going to risk getting cursed?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow. "At least use a handkerchief or something to wrap it in."
Sirius grinned sheepishly and fished a handkerchief from his pocket, and then picked up the locket. He peered at it thoughtfully, and mused aloud "I wonder how it ended up here."
"Don't you have a house elf?" Thomas asked, and Sirius grimaced.
"Foul thing," he muttered, and then bellowed. "Kreacher!"
The elf appeared with a small pop, a scowl already on its face, eyes narrowed in a nasty glare and mouth twisted in a snarl. The thing stank and Thomas covered his mouth and nose and Harry was gagging.
Sirius lifted the locket so Kreacher could see it and asked, "Where did this come from, Kreacher?"
The elf's big eyes widened and its mouth dropped open. "The Dark Lord's locket, it is! Master Regulus told Kreacher to destroy it, but Kreacher couldn't! Kreacher is a bad elf!" The elf wailed, kneeled and started banging its head against the floor.
"Who's Regulus?" Thomas asked, putting some distance between him and the elf, all the while keeping his hand on Harry's shoulder.
"My brother," Sirius answered, his fingers convulsing around the gold locket with the large, snakelike S. "He was a Death Eater and they killed him."
"Ask the elf about the Dark Lord, Black," Thomas ordered. "It said your brother wanted it destroyed."
Sirius' face looked pained, but he pursed his lips together and turned to the elf. "Where did Regulus get the locket, Kreacher?"
"Kreacher brought it to him, just like master Regulus said, yes Kreacher did."
"From the beginning, Kreacher, tell us about the Dark Lord!" Thomas demanded with a sharp voice, causing Sirius to glance at him suspiciously.
"The Dark Lord needed an elf and Master Regulus had offered Kreacher. Kreacher was to be doing a great service for the Dark Lord, a great honour." The elf was crying now, and they had trouble making out the words. "The Dark Lord took Kreacher to a cave, and there was a big, dark lake, that Kreacher crossed on a boat with the Dark Lord. T-there was a basin, a basin full of potion on an island in the lake. The D-Dark Lord made Kreacher drink…drink it, and Kreacher drank and drank and he saw terrible things and it burned, but Kreacher drank it all. Kreacher cried for help, for mistress and master but the Dark Lord laughed and made Kreacher drink it all…"
The elf shivered and sniffled, but when Sirius nudged him with his boot, it continued with the tale. "When the basin was empty, the Dark Lord dropped the locket in the basin and filled it more poison, and then the Dark Lord left, and left Kreacher on the island, all alone… Kreacher needed water, and drank from the lake… the hands, dead hands rose from the lake and dragged Kreacher to the water, and then…and then… Master Regulus told Kreacher to come back." The elf's eyes stared ahead, as if seeing something no one else could.
"Master Regulus was worried, worried for Kreacher and told Kreacher to stay hidden in the house, to not leave, and then…Master Regulus came to find Kreacher in his cupboard, and Master Regulus was worried, nervous, and he asked… he told Kreacher to take him to the cave Kreacher had gone with the Dark Lord…
"Master Regulus gave Kreacher a locket, like the one the Dark Lord had, and he told Kreacher to switch the lockets when the basin was empty, and to go home, and never, never tell mistress, ever and to…to destroy the first locket, and to never to tell… Master Regulus drank, all the potion and Kreacher swapped the lockets and saw… Master Regulus… Master Regulus was dragged to the water and Kreacher couldn't do what Master Regulus had ordered, Kreacher couldn't destroy the locket!"
The elf started banging his head against the floor again, but none of them were paying any attention to it anymore. Sirius was looking at the locket in his hand like it was a living viper, and Thomas had pushed Harry behind him, far away from it.
"I don't understand…" Sirius whispered. "I always thought Regulus was killed because he wanted out, but he…" Sirius shook his head. "He died for this. Why?"
"You should do something about the elf," Thomas said. "It's going to crack its head on the floor soon, and will be even more trouble then it is now."
Sirius shook himself, and eyes still clouded, he looked at the elf moaning and wailing on the floor. "Kreacher, go clean the bedrooms."
In the midst of a wail, Kreacher popped out.
"I should take this to Dumbledore," Sirius said, wrapping the handkerchief around the locket.
"You should," Thomas agreed, and when both Harry and Sirius turned to him, surprised, he shrugged. "He obviously knows more about Voldemort than any of us and probably has an idea about why the locket is so important. I may not like the man, but I can concede that much."
"Why don't you like him?" Sirius asked.
"That's between me and Dumbledore," Thomas said, but Sirius noticed the way his hand tightened around Harry's shoulder and how the boy leaned a little closer to his cousin.
"Yeah, sure," Sirius said distractedly and placed the locket in his pocket. He didn't know what exactly had happened, but by their reactions it was obvious that for some reason Dumbledore hadn't thought Harry should stay with Thomas and had told as much to both. "I know I promised to show you the house, but considering…"
"Another time," Thomas agreed and steered Harry towards the front door, letting Sirius follow them. "Maybe after you've cleaned the place."
"So you figured out I was trying to get you to help me clean, then?" Sirius yelled and heard two almost identical snorts.
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The next time Sirius came to visit, Harry was at school. Since it was the first day of the fall semester, Thomas suspected Sirius had waited intentionally until Harry was gone.
When he opened the door to Sirius, he just stood there, eyes rimmed red, a few days worth of stubble on his chin, looking like he'd missed of a few days of sleep and food. At least he'd showered, even if water and soap couldn't do much for the stink of booze.
"I'll make some coffee," Thomas offered. "I know you Brits usually go for tea, but trust me when I say there's nothing better than coffee when you have a hangover."
Sirius followed him through the house, shoulders hunched, dragging his feet and when they reached the kitchen he collapsed on a chair and lowered his head, keeping his eyes glued to the table top while Thomas filled the coffee machine.
"You don't have an accent," were the first words Sirius spoke to him.
"Practice. Speaking differently makes you noticed and with Harry, I don't want to be noticed." Thomas crossed his arms and leaned against the counter, the coffee machine making noises behind his back. "You don't look like shit because of my accent, or lack of it. Why are you here Sirius?"
His first name made Sirius look up. Thomas had never called him anything but Black and Sirius had thought it would stay that way forever. The only reason Sirius used Thomas's first name was because calling him Potter would have only reminded him of James. It was difficult enough not seeing his dead friend in the faces of both Harry and Thomas when they looked so much like him. The only real difference was Thomas's longer hair and the green eyes that both Harry and Thomas shared. How it was possible for those two to look even more a like than Harry and his father he wasn't sure, but stranger things had happened when purebloods mingled and the Potters had been an old family.
"You remember the locket?" Sirius asked and Thomas nodded and turned to take two cups from the cabinet and poured coffee for them. He set them both on the table sat down and pushed one of the cups to Sirius. "I showed it to Dumbledore and it took him a few days but he finally figured out what it is. It's a Horcrux." Sirius looked up and by the patient expression on Thomas's face he thought it meant he didn't know what it meant. "A Horcrux is a-"
"I know what a Horcrux is," Thomas stopped him.
Sirius let out a haggard breath and coiled his fingers around his coffee mug. "He thinks there's more, more than one," Sirius continued, lifted his hand but it shook so badly that some coffee spilled on the table and his hands. Sirius swore and jumped up, knocking down the chair. "Shit Thomas, he thinks Harry's one!" He hadn't meant to yell it, or even say it. Dumbledore had wanted him to get Thomas to agree for him to meet with Harry.
"He isn't."
"How can you be sure?" Sirius screamed at him, furious Thomas could just sit there calmly, sipping at his coffee.
"Because he was a Horcrux," Thomas told him and all the fight left Sirius.
"What?" Sirius wheezed.
"When Harry broke his arm once in school, when he was still living at the Dursleys, he met a woman in the hospital. She looked like a doctor, but she healed his arm with a few spells, told Harry that a bad man gave him the scar on his forehead and left a piece of himself behind. Harry told me she helped him chase it out, and that he got to meet his parents." Thomas pushed away the coffee mug, raised his head and looked straight at Sirius. "There isn't a lot known about Horcruxes, except that they're almost impossible to destroy. I imagine the only way to get one out of a living person is to kill them."
"So," Sirius swallowed. "So someone killed Harry when he was a kid."
"Yeah."
"That's… That's not…"
"Pretty much my reaction to it," Thomas replied. "I figured out the day Harry broke his arm and went to the hospital but there was no record of Harry ever breaking his arm. They did treat him for a gash on the forehead that same day, and the one who treated it was a male nurse, not a doctor."
"Memory charms," Sirius muttered, almost too quietly for anyone to hear, but Thomas nodded. "I'll have to tell Dumbledore, but he'll want to see Harry."
"No."
"Just for a few moments. I don't understand why you're so dead set against them meeting."
Still holding his mug Thomas stood from the table, reached out to pick Sirius' and placed them both in the sink. He rinsed them, set them on the side of the sink and just when Sirius thought Thomas wasn't going to answer, he spoke.
"Harry's still afraid of the Dursleys. Of being sent back there. When he wakes in the middle of the night he comes to my room, stands in the doorway and just looks at me. I think he wants to make sure I'm still there, that it wasn't a dream. If I'm not home when he comes from school, he panics." Thomas turned around and laughed bitterly. "When Dumbledore came here, he told me to take Harry back there, to those people and Harry heard him. I'm not letting that man anywhere near Harry, not for years to come."
"But Hogwarts-" Sirius started to say and then stopped himself. "The French lessons. You're not letting him go to Hogwarts, are you?"
Thomas shrugged and crossed his arms. "You saw them at the game. That's what Harry's life will be like at school if he goes to Hogwarts or tries to build any kind of life in Britain. I want to give him options and France is one of them."
"If anyone finds out you're going to send Harry to school in France-"
"It doesn't concern them, it's no one's business where I send him!" Thomas yelled, almost snarling at Sirius who was tired of Thomas using him as a punching bag when he couldn't get his hands on the Wizarding World.
"Have you any idea what they'll do?" Sirius yelled back. "I don't like it either, but Dumbledore will never stand for it. He'll have Harry attend Hogwarts even if he has to get the Wizengamot to pass a law to make it happen."
"And if he even tries to force Harry to do something he doesn't want to do I'll make Voldemort's rise seem like a vacation," Thomas growled low and dangerous and not for a second did Sirius doubt he could do it.
"Merlin, Potter," he breathed. "Don't… Don't be so fucking convincing, because it scares the shit out of me."
Thomas laughed but there was nothing reassuring in the sound. It reeked of hysteria.
"Don't ever have kids, Black, they really mess you up," Thomas said and Sirius was relieved to hear him sounding almost normal again.
"I thought we'd progressed to using first names," Sirius noted, smiling as the tension flowed from the room.
"I could never call you Sirius with a straight face," Thomas said. "Too many bad jokes."
"Yeah, my parents knew they hated me even before I was born."
It wasn't funny, but they both laughed.
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Harry turned ten with blond hair.
Another wizard had recognized Harry without his scar and even though the man had only wanted to shake his hand it scared Harry enough that he cried, yelled and begged until Sirius, who'd come to visit one day, took him to a hairdresser.
When Harry learned that he could go by himself to town and to the hairdresser blue streaks appeared midst the blond hair, soon joined by red and black.
The streaks disappeared when Thomas marched Harry to the hairdressers in town and swore none of them would do anything to the boy's hair unless he was with them. He even showed them Sirius' photograph to make sure Harry wouldn't use his godfather to get coloured streaks in his hair.
"If he gets piercings, I'm blaming you," Thomas told Sirius who just grinned and walked off to help Mrs Barret, the mother of one of Harry's friends and a recent divorcee, to bring the cake out to the garden.
Thomas glared at both of them; the radiant and blond woman who'd graciously volunteered to host the Birthday party when she heard Thomas had no one to help him, and at Sirius who wasted no time in charming the woman despite knowing it had been only a few weeks since her divorce had been finalized.
The fact that Sirius acted like a kid in a grown up's body didn't usually bother Thomas this much, but there were times when he wondered why he'd ever allowed Sirius to return after he'd introduced himself.
And Sirius was smart. He pretended so hard that he wasn't that sometimes he fooled even himself, but when it came down to it Sirius wasn't stupid, and he'd already commented on Thomas's lack of accent, and had probably noticed how alike Harry and Thomas looked.
Admitting to knowing about the Horcruxes probably hadn't been a very smart move either, but if he hadn't told Sirius what he knew he might have dragged Harry to Dumbledore without Thomas knowing and if that ever happened… Thomas wasn't actually sure what would happen, but what he did know was that he didn't want to find out.
Speaking with Dumbledore that one time had been bad enough and it had taken all his strength to keep the battling and conflicted emotions, the rage, sadness, and even some lingering fondness he could not shake from appearing on his face, or in his words. Banishing Dumbledore from the house had been done just as much for him as it had been for Harry. Bringing up the Dursleys had been the worst mistake Dumbledore could have made.
He'd understood the need for them, but he could never quite forgive and it infuriated him that Dumbledore wanted to do it again, to yet another small boy who'd had no one to care for him.
And Sirius…He didn't dare use his first name because he feared that if he spoke it aloud he'd put too much affection behind it, affection not meant for the man now laughing at something Mrs Barret had said.
There were many people he should and had avoided, but among those that were most dangerous were Dumbledore and Sirius and the other of those men he had invite to his life, revealed much of himself, too much, he sometimes feared when a look from Sirius was too long or weighing, when he answered a question from Sirius, only too late to notice that he had replied with truth without first comparing it to the life of Thomas Potter.
Mrs Barret slapped Sirius lightly on his shoulder and the man let out another booming laughter, his head thrown back, mouth wide open and neck bear to the world. Trusting, wild, rash, idiotic… There were so many adjectives to describe Sirius and most of them came with a negative label. Yet when they were added to Sirius Black's charisma and personality, all those negatives turned to positive and you soon forgot what you ever had against the man in the first place.
Thomas turned away from him and looked further into the garden where Harry was standing with one of his closest friends, Mrs Barret's son Martin, waving a stick like a sword or a… wand…
Casting one glance at the other children and parents Thomas made his way to Harry and Martin, hoping like hell Harry wasn't breaking the Statute of Secrecy, because it'd be too dangerous to Obliviate a child and Thomas wasn't that good with the charm even with adults.
"Harry," he started to say just when the boy waved the stick in an achingly familiar manner and yelled,
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
"Harry!" Thomas yelled, glancing over his shoulder at everyone else, who thankfully were now entertained by Sirius, even the children.
"Don't worry, Martin's a wizard too," Harry said, confidence much too like his godfather's for Thomas's comfort in his voice. "His dad's a French wizard and he turned his cat blue, so I told him I'm a wizard too. Can you show him a spell?"
Thomas pressed his hand against his forehead and tried not to have a seizure. It wouldn't do for him to fall down and start twitching in a kid's Birthday party.
"Are you sure Harry, because if you're not…" he let the words hang in the air and watched the other boy a little more closely than he had before.
Martin wasn't a shy kid, but neither was he a troublemaker, except when Harry shared some of Sirius' crazy ideas with the boy and Thomas received a note from school asking him to talk to the boy about the proper use of toilet paper, or something similar.
"There's cake," Harry said and gestured weekly towards the crowd already gathered around the table that had been brought to the garden. "I think they'll come looking for the Birthday boy soon," he finished.
"Can I dye my hair red?" Harry asked.
"No!" Thomas yelled. "Isn't blond bad enough?"
"Purple?"
"Why not green?"
"Can I?"
"No!"
"Harry!" Sirius yelled and waved his arms, beckoning the boy and Thomas gave him a little push in the back.
Laughing Harry and Martin ran to the table where Mrs Barret shared a fond smile with Sirius, but it turned a touch bitter when Sirius turned from her and his eyes found Thomas walking towards them behind the running boys and the smile that had before been friendly quickly changed into something more intimate.
She sighed, a little disappointed, but when Harry and her son reached the table her smile had returned and she ruffled Harry's blond hair fondly before the boy blew out the candles.
She even managed to smile warmly at Thomas when she handed him a slice of the cake she had baked for the party she had offered to host, in the hopes of meeting the dark haired gentleman that always visited the Potters, and whom Martin always spoke of so animatedly about.
Watching at the pair of them she now doubted it was just his responsibility to the child that kept him coming back, but it would take a while yet for neither to notice and perhaps nothing would even come of it. Mr Potter was a rather handsome man, after all and the boy's already got along so well…